The smell of car exhaust and coal and tar, the smell
of sap and vitriol

The smell of squalor, diapers, dogwood blooms, the
smell of sex

The smell of sharkskin, selfishness, anemones, the
smell of wine

The smell of eucalyptus, locust droves, axel grease,
and lemon rinds

The smell of boiling bones, of caulking and pickle
barrel brine

The smell of goldenrod and ragweed, paint fumes,
rotten fruit

The smell of sweetened gelatin, cream puffs,
fresh-baked bread

The smell of gunpowder, oily, oak hewn hulls,
hydrogen peroxide

The smell of diesel, tar, mud flats, cat clay, peat
moss, gasoline

The smell of weariness, of dog-tiredness, of autumn
in the wind:

Forgetting is a measure of the heart in a city that’s
found at rest.

This
series of poems looks at the smells, sights, sounds
of mid-nineteenth century America, in New York (around Newtown Creek,
Brooklyn)
partially through the eyes of Peter Cooper, at once abolitionist and
candidate
for the U.S. Presidency, pre-Gilded Age self-made man, railroad, steel,
and
manufactory entrepreneur and social reformer interested in the rights of
working men and women, but also a grand polluter of the New York
waterways. The 14 poems are written in 14 lines each, using a loose
sonnet form, as well as echoing the Persian ghazal (using the name of a
persona
within the poem), with an emphasis on the smelly things we pass every
day living
in the city.